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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus

  1. Place the asparagus in a pot and cover with cold water. Cook until very tender.

  2. Cut off a few tips of asparagus to serve in the soup.

  3. Mash the remaining asparagus with the cooking water through a strainer.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk in a separate pot.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, then stir in the flour and seasonings.

  3. Combine the butter mixture with the scalded milk.

  4. Add the asparagus pulp and tips to the milk mixture. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup once scalded and combined.
Asparagus
Provides the main flavour and, once mashed, the thick texture of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base for the thickened roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with the butter before the milk is added.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Cooking the flour in fat helps prevent lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened base. Adding the milk gradually while stirring keeps the soup silky rather than clumpy.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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